Real Life

Real Life (1979)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Albert Brooks

Starring: Albert Brooks, Charles Grodin, Frances Lee McCain, J.A. Preston, Matthew Tobin

From: Paramount

What an interesting movie this turned out to be. I explain it all below: 

Last night this was on Turner Classic Movies and as this is about a topic I have griped about here a few times (and many more times elsewhere), this sounded like a must-watch for me. Considering this was released in 1979, this was incredibly prescient of what has been popular in 21st century television, which I am not a fan of, but I'll get to that in a moment.

It is eerie how this predicted reality television years before it became a thing. The plot is that a smarmy filmmaker chose a family to film for a year for a documentary. The idea was borrowed from something shown on public television earlier in the decade. An American Family (screened on PBS) was a 1973 series that ran for 12 episodes and chronicled the Loud family. The idea was so shocking at the time no surprise there was controversy. It is best known not only for Mr. and Mrs. Loud divorcing during filming, but their teenage son Lance was openly gay. For those in the UK, there was a similar 1974 program called The Family.

An American Family did have some controversy as the Loud family was not exactly happy with how the documentary turned out; in what is not so shocking in these modern times, the producers emphasized the negative and crafted a certain narrative in order to tell a certain story. Plus, even if unintentional, the presence of cameras will change how people act. Real Life is a mockumentary about the Yeager family being filmed for a year but the smarmy director (Albert Brooks) ends up being more and more obtrusive in their lives in order to have a certain story told.

I've mentioned before that I not only don't watch reality television, but I hate it. It's a scourge upon the airwaves where everything's staged & phony, and obviously so. That is gross enough in something called “reality”; another aspect that's bad is how negative it is, everyone acting like A-holes and being incredibly rude. I have no interest in those fake dating shows (The Bachelor) or programs about talentless people I somehow am supposed to care about (The Kardashians) or Pawn Stars or Storage Wars or The Real World or any of that garbage.

Anyhow, the film has plenty of droll humor (and also absurd moments) and I found it to be very funny. “Reality” TV is not the only thing it satirizes. Plus, there were several other moments that seem more timely now. There was the late 1970's version of both flat screen televisions and digital cameras, although the latter was done in an over the top fashion for laughs by being incredibly large & obvious. I haven't watched Get Out but I know the biggest theme is how plenty of white people act differently to blacks and they try hard to relate and be sympathetic to them but come off as incredibly condescending instead. I mention that as there was a scene where Brooks interacted uncomfortably with a black psychologist.

Like I said I thought this was pretty funny as the parents of the Yeager family (led by Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) were both unforgettable in their performances, as was Brooks as he slowly but surely lost grip of his sanity during this boondoggle of a production. The film is worth seeing, even if it was an unfortunate harbinger of things to come in our real lives.